Many companies and individuals own or control vast amounts of property and other real holdings. Real property holdings can include commercial buildings, office space, manufacturing facilities, repair garages, warehouses, stores, and undeveloped land. The real property holdings also include related infrastructures such as electric service, communication networks, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units, cabinets, counters, shelving, flooring, rack space, cranes, lifts, mechanical devices, machinery, office equipment, decor, and other fixtures which are not readily moveable and constitute an integral part of the property.
A self-serve moving and storage company is one example of an entity that may own significant holdings in real property. As a necessary part of its normal operation, the self-serve moving and storage company has a variety of real assets such as retail stores to rent trucks and trailers, repair facilities to perform maintenance, office space to manage the company, rental units for storage of customer belongings, and manufacturing and retrofit facilities to build and make improvements to equipment. The real property owned by the self-serve moving and storage company generally includes the building, land, and related infrastructures as described above.
Ideally, the real property and related infrastructures should be identified, tracked, maintained, and properly managed for the benefit of the company and to meet requirements imposed by local, state, and federal laws, including tax, environment, and zoning requirements. Unfortunately, for many companies holding large property portfolios, the reality is that the detailed property information has problems in terms of accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and consistency. The detailed property information is often found in a variety of locations and known to or tracked by many different people, often in a disjoint manner with little or no communication between resources. The property information may exist only with the local store or property manager. If the local manager should leave the company, retire, or be re-assigned to a new location, a significant amount of useful information is lost. There is no correlation, common knowledge, shared communication, or centralized management of the detailed and dynamically changing property information.
A regional or national property manager probably knows the location and general attributes, e.g. address, square footage, and principal usage, of each property under his or her control and responsibility. However, it is unlikely that the local manager in city A has any knowledge that a property in city B has for example a leaky roof, and likewise the local manager of the property in city B does not know or probably even care that the property in city A needs a new air conditioner. The regional or national property manager may only find out about these specific problems and needs when each is brought to his or her attention in the form of purchase order or authorization request for repairs. When the repairs are complete and the immediate need has passed, the information as to what happened, when, why, who, and where is often discarded or filed away in some isolated and forgotten box or file cabinet. Any future value in each specific property management data point is lost with the lack of any central record keeping procedure and the next crisis of the moment or other pressures of the business. The lack of complete, accurate, real-time information is a significant problem for most if not all property managers.
In the prior art, efforts have been made to organize information related to real properties. Property management information is generally kept by many different people and different departments, each having their own interests and needs. The maintenance department may keep maintenance records; the purchasing department keeps purchasing records; the finance department keeps financial records; the legal department keeps legal records; and so on. Multiple sets of lists, files, records, receipts, permits, appraisals, advisories, and reports may exist for example on computer-based spreadsheets, each within the cognizant department, but often with overlapping and sometimes conflicting information between groups. Most departments have little knowledge of or concern for what other departments keep track of and how such information is used.
Aside from the physical repair and maintenance of real property holdings, an overall property management program may also involve managing the real property portfolio as a financial asset of the company. Each property within a company's portfolio has a fair market value as determined by its location, land, square footage, useful features, convenient ingress and egress, curb appeal, condition of the structure and fixtures, past revenue generating performance and future potential, and the state of the local economy. The value of each property and the company's percent equity in the property will hopefully increase, but possibly decrease, over time with nature of the business, success of the marketing strategy, maturing of the customer base and sales growth, occupancy rate, and general direction of property values in the area.
When acquiring a new property, a common approach may involve a cash or cash-equivalent down-payment and a loan for the balance secured by the property being purchased. The downside of this approach is the need to invest hard cash in the new property. Depending on the business plan of the company and philosophy of the management team, another approach is to leverage the equity in existing properties as the basis to secure 100% financing, or minimal cash investment, to purchase new properties or otherwise borrow capital for the benefit of the company and its shareholders. Such a strategy allows a company to borrow without committing a significant amount of cash. The loan can be used to acquire new real properties, improve existing real property assets, upgrade equipment, invest in research and development, improve customer service, and acquire new businesses.
Most if not all lenders want to know considerable information about real properties being offered as collateral for loans to purchase other company assets and make capital improvements. Some lenders consider the use of existing real property as collateral to secure other real property to have some risk associated with the transaction. The lender must be protected in terms of fair market value of the leveraged property in the event of a foreclosure and default sale.
When the company owns a large number of properties, such information is often difficult to come by or compile in short order because of inadequate record keeping and constantly changing circumstances. The lender may have to send one or more teams to the borrower's place of business to conduct due diligence. If the borrower is offering multiple properties as packaged collateral, the lender may have to travel to several locations. The lender's due diligence and the borrower's compliance to the lender's demands becomes a laborious, time consuming, expensive, and error-prone process for both parties, especially when the relevant property information is scattered, dated, incomplete, lost, or otherwise hard to come by.
Moreover, the company may not even know all the valuable and attractive gems in their property portfolio which could be leveraged to help finance and grow the company. Again, the de-centralization of record keeping and many silos of information lead to missed opportunities and less than optimal processes and results for lenders and borrowers alike.